How easy is it to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave without using any of those opprobrious terms! To spare the grossness of the names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to draw a full face, and to make the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of shadowing. This is the mystery of that noble trade, which yet no master can teach to his apprentice; he may give the rules, but the scholar is never the nearer in his practice. Neither is it true that this fineness of raillery is offensive. A witty man is tickled while he is hurt in this manner, and a fool feels it not. The occasion of an offense may possibly be given, but he cannot take it. If it be granted that in effect this way does more mischief; that a man is secretly wounded, and though he be not sensible himself, yet the malicious world will find it out for him; yet there is still a vast difference betwixt the slovenly butchering of a man, and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place. A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch’s¹ wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging; but to make a male-factor die sweetly was only belonging to her husband. I wish I could apply it to myself, if the reader would be kind enough to think it belongs to me.

¹ A notorious public executioner

(1) Except for the professional opportunities archaeology affords and the state-of-the-art technologies that archaeologists use, many people might assume that archaeology has little to do with the present. (2) After all, archaeology is the study of human history. (3) A recent finding at Eleutherna, the site of an ancient Greek city on Crete, provides a striking example: unearthing the skeleton of a woman, archaeologists struggled to interpret the unusual signs of strain on the bones until they watched a local craftswoman at work. (4) The archaeologists’ interpretation not only challenges popular assumptions about archaeology, but it also forces archaeologists to reexamine their assumptions about women’s work in ancient Greece.

(5) Eleutherna researchers discovered the skeleton in 2009. (6) Preliminary analysis determined that the approximately 50-year-old woman lived between 900 and 650 BCE. (7) Examining her remains, the archaeologists eyeballed something truly wacky: unlike the cartilage of other female specimens at the site, the cartilage on the upper right side of the skeleton’s body and on the right-hip and knee joints was almost completely worn away. (8) This anomaly signified that the woman must have engaged in a long-term strenuous activity involving the right side of her body. (9) Seeking more exact information, the researchers drew on their assumptions about the kinds of work women performed in ancient Greece. (10) Deploying skeletal models, the archaeologists tried bread-baking, weaving, harvesting, etc.—but to no avail.

(11) Wondering if the present could unlock the past, the archaeologists spent several years observing people near Eleutherna who performed tasks similar to those the ancient Greeks would have performed. (12) Success came in 2018 when a female ceramicist modeled her work for the researchers. (13) Analyzing her movements as she worked on large vases and listening to her detail the physical toll of the work, the team was convinced that the ancient Eleuthernan woman whose skeleton it was studying must have been a potter, a guess later confirmed by medical imaging and further anatomical modeling.

(14) The woman was not just a ceramicist, though. (15) The extent of wear on her remains indicates that she was a master ceramicist. (16) Archaeologists had long assumed that professional pottery making was the exclusive province of males in ancient Greece. (17) The Eleutherna researchers, supplementing Greece’s archaeological discoveries, acknowledge that they have more to learn.

(1) Given their growing popularity, many people are convinced that emojis are or will become a genuine, independent language. (2) However, while emojis have a growing—and perhaps indispensable—role in modern communication, they will never become a language of their own.

(3) Some people have actually tried to force emojis to act as a language. (4) In fact, graphic designer Joe Hale went so far as to “translate” all of Alice in Wonderland into emojis. (5) The fact that one needs to “read” Hale’s version alongside the printed text of the original, however, demonstrates the fact that emojis simply do not function in the same way words do. (6) Instead, emojis are icons that, as linguist Vyvyan Evans points out, “do not constitute a language because they do not have a grammar that allows them to be combined into more complex units of meaning.”

(7) The power of emojis, and the likely reason for their popularity, is that they add context and nuance to written communication. (8) When we are speaking to other people, according to Evans, “70% of the meaning . . . comes from non-verbal cues.” (9) Those cues (inflection and tone, body language, facial expressions, etc.) are not available in written communications, which can lead to misunderstandings. (10) Emojis were invented to minimize those misunderstandings, and as e-mails, text messages, and social media posts have become more and more common, the implementation of emojis has gone through the roof. (11) Even in 2015 there were already 6 billion emojis sent in text messages every day.

(12) As we communicate more using our computers and phones, we are likely to see more emojis, though the list of fun facts on guesstheemoji.org reminds us that emojis are not the same as emoticons. (13) They still play an important role in fostering clear and nuanced communication.

(1) In 2016, artist Olafur Eliasson identified a pressing concern for the world today. (2) “We do not feel strongly enough that we are part of a global community,” he warned. (3) But Eliasson and other artists can help address this problem: art has the potential to foster communication that strengthens existing communities and helps form new ones.

(4) Artworks created by artists outside of a particular community often do not appeal to members of that community because of a lack of connection between the artists and their intended audience. (5) This dynamic is illustrated in printmaker Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.’s 2017–2018 piece Passin’ on to Others. (6) Kennedy collected commonplace phrases from customers of local barbershops and salons in Richmond, Virginia, and hand printed them on multicolored posters. (7) Kennedy’s transformation and display of sayings such as “higher the hair, closer to heaven” celebrated the daily experiences of salon patrons, reinforcing the self-esteem of stylists and patrons alike and getting everyone talking. (8) What the artwork had accomplished, in effect, was a recontextualization of the style community’s experiences. (9) Words that previously had passed unremarked now joined other aphorisms and sayings that Kennedy has printed on posters.

(10) Experiencing art doesn’t just highlight existing connections; it actively forges new ones. (11) In galleries and performance halls, people come together for events Eliasson describes as “strongly rooted in a physical experience, in our bodies.” (12) Not all artworks are experienced in galleries and performance halls, however. (13) Former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts Jane Chu explains how playing the piano connected her to others at a time when, as a child of immigrants, she felt out of step with her parents and community. (14) “I felt as though I belonged,” she says of her performances, “because I had an avenue of expression beyond just the linear use of everyday words.”

(15) By pulling us out of our habitual ways of thinking and communicating, art provides us with opportunities to renew and even create connections to a larger society.

(1) Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places on Earth: people crowd into tiny living spaces, some with only a bed, a hot plate, and a toilet. (2) The city is made up of more than 200 islands, and there is no more available land to house its people. (3) To solve this land shortage problem, officials have proposed a radical solution: creating a whole new island. (4) The East Lantau Metropolis would be built on land reclaimed from the sea and would house 1.1 million people.

(5) A different problem faces the people of Kiribati—a nation in the central Pacific Ocean made up of 33 islands (most of which are less than twenty feet above sea level). (6) Because of rising sea levels, some inhabitants have already had to abandon their homes. (7) New islands will have to be built to ensure a safe future for its citizens, because science indicates that Kiribati will go underwater within the century.

(8) Artificial islands have been seen as solutions for a number of problems in recent decades. (9) The city of Dubai has been constructing a luxurious palm-tree-shaped series of islands to house hotels. (10) Osaka, Japan, built an island off its coast to relieve its overcrowded airport. (11) The Maldives, Malaysia, and Seoul have all built or have plans to build artificial islands to expand their territory.

(12) So, is building artificial islands a good solution for modern-day challenges? (13) Not everyone thinks so. (14) Constructing artificial islands destroys the coral reefs that nourish fisheries and protect the coastline from the impact of waves; it also destabilizes precious coastal ecosystems. (15) Building on unstable dredged sediments also endangers human inhabitants, especially in areas prone to earthquakes.